Contemporary Philosophy

As time passes, so does ideology. Nothing exists once and for always and the general beliefs shared by a community – be it on a local, regional or global range – shapeshift all the time without demanding the community’s awareness.

However, we look at philosophy in a timeless way, without realizing that framing the world and ideas about it cannot be done without any relation to the contemporary events forming the world as it is at that point in time. Because framework is inevitably influenced by the circumstances and vice versa, we cannot claim ideas to be truly timeless. (Although time is just a construct of convention, what is meant by time in this context does not include the idea of dividing the movement of all events into units of time, such as hours, days or years. Here time only signifies a correlation between several happenstances going along with, and implying each other.)

The circumstances of the world as it is change, thus the (ideally objective) views on it have to change accordingly. This indicates that philosophy as well is not timeless. Now, this does by no means suggest that all philosophical work must be banished and burned, so we can contemplate the world in an unbiased manner, it simply attempts to make us aware that philosophical work must be viewed with caution, for it may be inaccurate when applied to the present. Furthermore, this may lead us to the conclusion that philosophers have to include contemporary philosophy into their field of research.